The Blue Bistro (43 page)

Right before Adrienne became aware of the time, she had been regaling Fiona with the story of Doug, the cocaine, the theft of Adrienne’s Future, the arrest. Fiona was shaking her head, coughing. She drank some water, then she poured the last of the champagne, and watching it dribble out of the bottle snapped Adrienne out of her reverie. And Fiona, too, because she said, “I think we should talk about Thatcher.”

“Should we?” Adrienne said. She was drunk now—
again
—and talking about Thatcher sounded like a bad idea. And yet, the tone of Fiona’s voice made it seem like this had been the point of the whole dinner: to talk about Thatcher.

“We should,” Fiona said. Her long hair hung over the back of her chair and her face had regained its color—lightly suntanned with freckles across her nose. Adrienne felt her eyes drooping, but Fiona seemed as alert as ever. Alert, intense, focused. What was the first thing Thatch had ever said about her?
My partner, Fiona. She never sleeps.

“Go ahead,” Adrienne said with a grand sweep of her hand. “Talk.”

Fiona fidgeted with the crusts of bread on her plate. She’d eaten nearly the whole sandwich and half the pickle. “I’ve never talked to one of Thatcher’s girlfriends like this before,” she said.

“He told me he didn’t have girlfriends.”

“He had a girlfriend in high school. Carrie Tolbert. She hated me,” Fiona said. “And he had a girlfriend in college, Bridget, her name was. Hated me. And since he’s been on Nantucket . . . the occasional one-night stand he never wanted me to find out about.” She took a huge breath, like she was planning on going underwater. “Anyway, here’s what I want to tell you, because I think it’s only fair you should know. Thatcher and I have a special bond.”

For whatever reason, these words incensed Adrienne. They made her as mad as a bee sting, or a glass of ice water in her face, or lemon juice in her eye. Something clicked in her, or unclicked.

“Why don’t you tell me about it?” Adrienne said. “You can start by telling me how you’ve known each other since you were in diapers. Then you can tell me about how you walked together on the first day of kindergarten and about how he tried to kiss you on top of the slide the night before tenth grade started when you were out drinking on the elementary school playground. I’ve heard it. You pushed him away. But you never let him go. You invited him to Nantucket because you knew he would sell everything he had and hand it over to you. Now it’s twelve years later and the man is as devoted to you as ever. You wonder why he never has girlfriends, and why the ones he did have resented you. You
wonder
!” Adrienne paused. She felt like a bottle of Laurent-Perrier that had been violently shaken and then opened, spewing everywhere. Restraint was a mountaintop on a faraway continent. She couldn’t stop herself. “I can’t believe you have the nerve to tell me you have a special bond like I am too
stupid
to have figured it out on my own. Where do you think I’ve been the last three months, Fiona? He’s my boyfriend. I sleep with him every night. But you think I don’t know that you’re in bed with us, too? That you never leave his mind? I get it, Fiona. Your relationship is special. It is more special than my relationship with Thatcher. It is the most special.”

Fiona was quiet, staring out at the moonlit water like she hadn’t even heard. “I was afraid this would happen.”

“What?”

“You’re upset.”

“I’m not upset,” Adrienne shouted. “I’d just like some credit for understanding how things are. My first date with the man he ate exactly nothing and left me cold as soon as you called. The night he first told me he loved me he made sure he mentioned that he loved you, too. ‘Differently,’ he said, whatever that means.”

“It means we’re friends,” Fiona said. “Nothing but friends.”

“Nothing but friends!” Adrienne said incredulously. “Thatcher is yours and he’s been yours all along.”

“I’ve never seen him like he is this summer,” Fiona said. “You changed him. He’s different. He’s happy.”

“That may be,” Adrienne said. “But it won’t mean much in the end. You know it and I know it.” She threw her napkin onto her empty plate and moved her chair back from the table. “This was a nice dinner. I enjoyed myself. But just now I can’t figure out why you invited me here. Did you want to
gloat
?”

“No,” Fiona said. In the moonlight, her tank top and pants looked very white, like she was an angel. Or a ghost. “I wanted to say I was sorry.”

TO
: [email protected]

FROM
: [email protected]

DATE
: August 16, 2005, 9:33
A.M
.

SUBJECT
: the sturgeon moon

The full moon in August is called the sturgeon moon by the Native Americans. There’s a piece of useless trivia to share with your patients.

Did you know that the summer you sent me to Camp Hideaway I lied to all the girls in my cabin? I told them my brother was dying. Jonathan. I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t exactly a lie because I did have a brother Jonathan who died. But for years I wondered what it was that made me say that. Why not just say Mom was sick? I wasn’t okay saying she was sick and I’ve never been okay saying that she’s dead. I never learned to deal with it, Dad. I never learned how to make it okay in my own mind.

I know the girls in my cabin had a reunion later that summer. Pammy Ipp told me about it in a letter. They all met at the Cherry Hill Mall and ate at the food court. She wrote to let me know I hadn’t been invited.

Love.

TO
: [email protected]

FROM
: [email protected]

DATE
: August 16, 2005, 10:27
A.M
.

SUBJECT
: none

Honey, are you all right? Love, love, love.

TO
: [email protected]

FROM
: [email protected]

DATE
: August 16, 2005, 9:42
A.M
.

SUBJECT
: Another season

I don’t know how things got so messed up. I came here for money and money I now have. I thought that was what I wanted—money saved up for my Future. Then I fell in love and now my wanting is ten-fold but the problem is that what I want doesn’t have a price. It’s this big, important, shapeless thing—I want to be loved in return, I want my situation to be different, somehow, but I don’t even know how. I thought I had problems in Aspen. Ha! I did not. In comparison, I did not.

TO
: [email protected]

FROM
: [email protected]

DATE
: August 16, 2005, 12:02
P.M
.

SUBJECT
: Another season

Adrienne, are you all right?

Darla and Grayson Parrish were getting divorced. They had been married forty-two years, but twelve of those years were tainted by Grayson’s adulterous relationship with Nonnie Sizemore from Darla’s bridge group. Nonnie Sizemore was six months older than Darla and fifty pounds heavier. She was a clownish woman, Darla told Adrienne, jolly, she talked a lot, laughed a lot, ate and drank a lot. She smoked. Darla wouldn’t say she had always pitied Nonnie Sizemore, who had been divorced from her husband since 1973, but she would say she had never envied her. And she certainly never believed Nonnie was capable of betrayal—but, in fact, Nonnie had been sleeping with Grayson for a dozen years. They had even snuck off for a week together some years earlier to Istanbul. Grayson had claimed business—the hunt for tile and stone—in Europe. But Istanbul! It was a place that held zero appeal for Darla, and she had to admit it was possible that she’d lost touch of how different her predilections were from those of her husband. They had practically nothing to talk about.

“I did notice your dinners this summer were a little . . . quiet,” Adrienne said. She and Darla were sitting at table nineteen in the most secluded corner of the restaurant. It was occupied every night, but Adrienne always thought of it as the table where Leon Cross sat when he ate with his mistress. She
thought of it as the table where Thatcher did the bills each night. Now it was the table where Darla Parrish had bravely decided to eat alone. She wouldn’t give up the standing Tuesday and Friday night reservations, not when the restaurant was less than two weeks away from closing. She could have invited other people to dine with her—her sister Eleanor, her best friend Sandy Beyrer—but that felt like denial somehow. She was to be a single woman; she would eat alone, with Adrienne as occasional company. Ten minutes here or there; Darla appreciated whatever time Adrienne could spare.

“Watching you gives me hope,” Darla said. “When you leave this island for the next fabulous place, you call me. I’m going with you.”

For three nights running, Thatcher had spent the night at Fiona’s house. Fiona slept hooked up to an oximeter, and when her O
₂
sats dropped, an alarm sounded. Thatcher was there to respond to the alarm, call an ambulance, get Fiona to the hospital, and although this hadn’t happened, he wasn’t sleeping. He showed up at work with his hair parted on the wrong side and his cuffs buttoned incorrectly. He misplaced his watch for twenty-four hours. In the days since Holt Millman’s party, the only real conversation that Adrienne had had with Thatcher was about the lost watch. He bought it for himself with his profits from the Bistro the first year. The watch and the Bistro were linked in his mind. He received compliments on the watch every night; once, Charlie Sheen had tried to buy it right off his wrist.

Adrienne understood how certain objects could hold real value, though she didn’t have anything herself that was worth anything—except now, a couple of great pairs of shoes. She offered to help Thatcher search Fiona’s place, but when she suggested this, he backed up.

“Whatever,” he said. “It’s just a watch.”

The following morning, however, when Fiona’s cleaning lady found the watch on the windowsill of Fiona’s bathroom, Thatcher’s mood improved. He led Adrienne from the podium into the wine cave, where they made love standing
up with Adrienne’s back against the cooling unit. It seemed sneaky and cheap, and Adrienne thought miserably of the one-night stands Fiona had mentioned.

“I love you,” Adrienne said.

Thatcher kissed her neck in response, then he laughed. “Ha!”

She could tell he was thinking about the watch, and sure enough, once Adrienne was back at the phone, Thatcher asked her to clear a table for Consuela, Fiona’s cleaning lady—dinner for two, on him.

Three nights without Thatcher turned into five, six, seven.

“It’s been a whole week,” Adrienne said to Caren. It was another hot, sunny morning. They sat at the sawed-off table in the shade of the backyard, Adrienne drinking tea, Caren drinking espresso and poring over the Pottery Barn catalog. She needed furniture for her new apartment.

Caren looked up from a page of leather sofas. “Are you worried?”

“I’m furious,” Adrienne said. She was in her running clothes, ready to put on her shoes and go. But now that she had Caren’s attention, she wanted to keep it. “I know I should feel sorry for Fiona, but I can’t.”

Caren bit her thumbnail. “That’s tricky.”

“You think I’m horrible,” Adrienne said. “I am horrible.” She stared at her bare feet. They were tan with white lines from the straps of her flip-flops; her toenails were painted “ripe raspberry.” These were the feet of a woman who had learned to stand for eight-hour stretches, and who had learned to walk in slides and sling backs with a four-inch heel. These were the feet of a woman who had kicked the bad habit of lying about her past and who had learned to trust a man and love him. The summer had been so brilliant. What was happening to her sense of peace, her happiness? What was happening to her?

Since her dinner with Fiona, Adrienne had tried to stay out of the kitchen, but she couldn’t avoid the normal course of her job. She had to pick up the chips and dip; she had to help the waitstaff. The previous evening, when Adrienne
walked into the kitchen to put in a VIP order for the owner of American Seasons, she found Fiona whipping a side towel against the pass like she was a jockey in the Kentucky Derby. The sweat streamed down her face, her hair was matted to her head.

“Ordering table one: one chowder, one bisque. Who are these people eating soup when it’s so hot?” She glanced over at Adrienne. “And you, my dear, look as fresh as a fucking daisy.”

Adrienne could not get past her fury. It was a boulder blocking her path.

Adrienne left Caren to her armchairs and ottomans. Caren couldn’t handle Adrienne’s anger. There was, perhaps, only one person who could.

Adrienne pulled Drew Amman-Keller’s card out of the top drawer of her desk.

She thought he might sound smug, or victorious, but when Drew Amman-Keller answered the phone and learned it was Adrienne calling, he treated her like a friend.

“Adrienne, how’s the summer going? I mean to come in one more time before you close, but, as you know, I’m at the mercy of Mr. Millman. That was some party last week, wasn’t it?”